The Bengal government on Friday filed an FIR against some former “unelected” members of the trustee board of the 500-year-old Sree Sree Radhe Shyam Sundor temple in Khardah of North 24-Parganas for their alleged involvement in the misappropriation of public money and misuse of gold and silvery jewellery.

“This is a rare instance of the government filing complaints against some trustee board members of an old temple,” said a source aware of the developments.

The temple located at Goswamipara in Khardah is an important place for Vaishnavites.

The FIR is the fallout of an inquiry and a complaint lodged by the administrator general and official trustee, Biplab Roy, who has been empowered by the government to look after temple affairs.

A source at the local police station said the law enforcers had started a case against at least two board members since the preliminary inquiry found that they were embezzling “crores of rupees offered to the deity” as pranami by the devotees. There are also complaints that they were evading stamp duty and registration fees by selling the temple’s property illegally, added the source.

“The government has meanwhile nullified the unelected trustee board committee and replaced it with a three-member ad-hoc committee consisting of the Khardah municipality chairperson, the officer in charge of Khardah police and the SDO Barrackpore to look after temple affairs and to make necessary arrangements for the board’s election,” said a source.

Khardah municipality chairperson Nilu Sarkar welcomed the state government’s move. “Some unscrupulous persons were playing with the faith of the devotees…This should be stopped and the offenders should be punished,” she told The Telegraph.

According to legends, the temple was set up by Birbhadra Goswami, son of Nityananda Goswami, who was one of f ive close aides to Sri Chaitanyadev.

“Devotees offer donations and pranami in cash and also offer jewellery to the deity. But in the past 10 years, all cash and jewellery remained unaccounted for and that’s why there are no records available on the temple’s income in terms of cash and valuables,” said a source.

Sources said after several allegations were raised from various levels about the functioning of the unelected board, the state government appointed the administrator general and official trustee in July to hold an election and to conduct an audit of income and expenditure of the temple.

During the audit and inquiry, Roy noticed the alleged irregularities by the unelected committee and prepared an inquiry report.

The inquiry report states that some of these members hatched a conspiracy and caused “huge financial loss” to the temple without maintaining accounts of income, randomly siphoning off daily earnings from pranami and misused banked cash, eventually ceasing the net balance to“zero”.

“During the past 10 years, some board members looted the temple... These men took charge replacing some corrupted members earlier. But they turned out to be more unscrupulous,” a devotee said.

Debmalya Goswami, one of the accused committee members, did not take calls or respond to messages sent to him.